Venice was a much more pleasant experience than expected. We thought we would see a few dirty channels, a big touristy crowd and that it would be very expensive. We turned out to be completely wrong; except for the expensive part.

In fact Venice is a romantic and picturesque town with small alleys and a lot more small channels than we expected. There is in fact water all over the place. All houses have a great deal of patina, and if they would have been standing somewhere else they would probably have been called shacks. But here they add to the atmosphere.

We thought the channels were used for driving around tourists in gondolas and that the normal life of the town was going on elsewhere. We were completely wrong! The channel system is used for the everyday life and all kinds of transports as building materials, furniture, food, the police, the ambulance and
taxi
. There is no cars at all here you have to walk or go by boat to get around town. Cool!

In the evening we had a
romantic three course dinner
with vine in a restaurant by one of the
channels
, while the night fell over Venice. One after another the lights were lit, and the lights of the restaurants, the houses and the boats glittered like stardust in the water of the channel.

8/9 Venice, Italy

Lat N 45° 28,82', Long E 12° 16,52' Today: 77 °F (
+25. °C)

08 Sep 2005

15992 km

One day in Venice is sufficient. Today we headed for Ljubljana in Slovenia. We are now traveling eastwards towards Bulgaria again, where we are going to meet Kajsa & Martin at the 16:th of September.

Slovenia feels like any other West European country. Everything is well organized and the prices are high. It is hard to trace any signs of the former East European heritage.